Iran, the ultimate "red state."

Thomas Friedman analyzes the world's biggest "blue state" (Europe), Americans who's outlook is no longer American but European (the Democrats) and the dawning realization in Europe that their anti-Bush sentiments are actually anti-American sentiments.

Why are Europeans so blue over George Bush's re-election? Because Europe is the world's biggest "blue state." This whole region is a rhapsody in blue. These days, even the small group of anti-anti-Americans in the European Union is uncomfortable being associated with Mr. Bush. There are Euro-conservatives, but, aside from, maybe, the ruling party in Italy, there is nothing here that quite corresponds to the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-tax, anti-national-health-care, anti-Kyoto, openly religious, pro-Iraq-war Bush Republican Party.

If you took all three major parties in Britain - Labor, Liberals and Conservatives - "their views on God, guns, gays, the death penalty, national health care and the environment would all fit somewhere inside the Democratic Party," said James Rubin, the Clinton State Department spokesman, who works in London. "That's why I get along with all three parties here. They're all Democrats!"

[...]

...the prevailing mood on the continent (if I may engage in a ridiculously sweeping generalization!) still seems to be one of shock and awe that Americans actually re-elected this man.

Before Mr. Bush's re-election, the prevailing attitude in Europe was definitely: "We're not anti-American. We're anti-Bush." But now that the American people have voted to re-elect Mr. Bush, Europe has a problem maintaining this distinction. The logic of the Europeans' position is that they should now be anti-American, not just anti-Bush, but most Europeans don't seem to want to go there. ...

Why not? The they will just be joining the French.

Europeans were convinced that Kerry had won on election night and were telling themselves that they knew all along that Americans were not all that bad - and then suddenly, as the truth emerged, there was a feeling of slow resignation: 'Oh well, we've been dreaming,' " said Dominique Moisi, one of France's top foreign policy analysts. "In fact, real America is moving away from us. We don't share the same values. ... In France it was a very emotional issue. It was as if Americans were voting for the president of France as much as for president of the United States."

[...]

The one concrete result of the U.S. election will probably be to reinforce Europe's focus on its own efforts to build a United States of Europe, and to further play down the trans-Atlantic alliance. "When it comes to emotions, the re-election of Bush has reinforced the feeling of alienation between Europe and the U.S.," Mr. Moisi said. "It is not that we are so much against America, it is that we cannot understand the evolution of that country. ... This election has weakened the concept of 'the West.' "[Emphasis mine—johnh]

HA! "Weakened the concept of 'the West'", Huh? And exactly who's "concept of 'the West' might have been weakened? Europe created Communism (Karl Marx was a German), Fascism, Nazism, Socialism and UN worship and yet according to top frog foreign policy analyst, Moisi, it’s all America’s fault that “the concept of ‘the West’” has been weakened.”

Hey Moisi, since when has the “the concept of ‘the West’” included incorporating losing national strategies such a heavy trade protectionism, economy crushing welfare systems, high unemployment, transnational progressivism, effete-ism, unilateral disarmament, the inability to defend national interests, the refusal to acknowledge that the West is under islamofascist attack? Not doing these things doesn’t weaken the concept of ‘the West’, it just make the U.S. a better, stronger place than Europe.

Let me offer you my concept of ‘the West’: the Europeans can fund economy-crushing welfare states by unilaterally disarming. Europeans have the freedom to be this irresponsible because they know that the U.S. is defending Europe.

The Europeans can indulge in moral preening on the world stage because they are relieved of the manly tasks of defending themselves. Europe’s detachment from having to conduct her own defense make it so much easier for her to shriek effeminate objections to the methods the U.S. uses when defending Europe.

And my final part of my concept of ‘the West’ is that Europe will have a fruitless hissy fit after she realizes how America has already dismissed Europe as simply irrelevant. America need not take any notice; nobody here (other than Democrats) gives a damn.

Funnily enough, the one country on this side of the ocean that would have elected Mr. Bush is not in Europe, but the Middle East: it's Iran, where many young people apparently hunger for Mr. Bush to remove their despotic leaders, the way he did in Iraq.

An Oxford student who had just returned from research in Iran told me that young Iranians were "loving anything their government hates," such as Mr. Bush, "and hating anything their government loves." Tehran is festooned in "Down With America" graffiti, the student said, but when he tried to take pictures of it, the Iranian students he was with urged him not to. They said it was just put there by their government and was not how most Iranians felt.

Iran, he said, is the ultimate "red state." Go figure.

Go figure what? What is there to work-out about the obvious? Of course the Iranian people would love for us to remove their criminal regime and toss them the keys. Watching the impending elections in Iraq has to be killing them with envy.